1950, December 6: (Magloire Takes Office: The Dress Blues, the Whiskey Song, the Gray Suede Shoes, and the Noir Who Was No Mangeur-Mulâtres): Climaxing three…

1950, December 6: (Magloire Takes Office: The Dress Blues, the Whiskey Song, the Gray Suede Shoes, and the Noir Who Was No Mangeur-Mulâtres): Climaxing three days of celebration, Magloire took office on December 6, 1950, as General Lavaud again handed over power to an elected president — meanwhile, sitting with a sense of historical fitness at Gonaïves, Dantès Bellegarde and twenty-one colleagues had completed the new constitution, adopted by the legislature on November 28, from which the Estimé-era interdict against serving officers assuming political office was pointedly missing. The charismatic, forty-two-year-old noir from Quartier Morin who now entered the palace was direct, authoritative, fond of order, and given to show — one of his first actions was to suit out the Garde Présidentielle in resplendent dress blues. Like Toussaint, Magloire loved horses, and the army stables soon boasted a handsome set of officers’ chargers. The president was no mangeur-mulâtres: his associations cut across the racial divide as no Haitian ruler’s ever had. He was also a great bambocheur, moving ebulliently from party to party without guards or escort, tarrying at the clubs for poker or bridge; Sundays at his hideout in La Boule, old army friends and leading politicians would gather for baccarat and whiskey, whose plenteous flow soon evoked a popular song about being drunk on whiskey every day, even at mother’s breast. However late he partied, Magloire the soldier was up each morning with the roosters, working out on an exercise machine, getting a rubdown and an eye-opener of pungent coffee, then dressing immaculately in white linen or gray gabardine with his favorite gray suede shoes and getting to work in time to see the guard execute morning colors as the Dessalinienne blared out on the stroke of eight.